


bite no bit, drink no drop

by OkayAristotle



Series: Hand In Hand [1]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Bruce Wayne Loves Children, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slade Wilson Is Not A Great Parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25205044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OkayAristotle/pseuds/OkayAristotle
Summary: He wonders, with the calm of a man with nothing left to lose, if this is what Joey felt. If he choked on dirt and thought about home.
Relationships: Eventual Bruce Wayne/Slade Wilson
Series: Hand In Hand [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825996
Comments: 10
Kudos: 82





	bite no bit, drink no drop

**Author's Note:**

> Mild warnings for mentions of Grant's death, and allusions to child abuse. Other than that, not much to be warned of. Also, takes place in a weird timeline where Grant died a while ago, I guess. Don't read into it too much.

Adeline is staring at him. She talks, and talks, and Slade hears none of it. Enhancements mean nothing when all Slade can hear is the silence. The unbearable quiet, upstairs, where Joey should be. 

Grant and Joey both. 

Joey is always padding around, peeking around corners. Never stops talking to Adeline, or the television, or rambling about something while staring out the window. It's never _quiet_ , and Slade's home is like a tomb at that moment. No breathing, no beating heart. 

Just — silent. 

Adeline grips his arm, he can see it. Watches her nails dig in, tugging him back into the horrible reality that he cannot — _will not_ entertain. 

"Where do you think you're going?" Is what breaks through, accusatory. "You did this. Don't you dare leave now, Slade." She holds on, and Slade moves on autopilot, barely feels the stairs under his feet or Adeline's fingers when they slip free. "You did this." 

There's no point talking, not when the boys are gone. And if he'd thought, for even a second, that it would feel like _this—_ he'd never of had kids. Nothing was worth this. 

_Joey ran away._

Slade grits his teeth, shoulders Joey's bedroom open. Empty. 

School books and dirty sneakers, one of Joey's little polo shirts over the back of a chair. His bed is made, little tight corners folded down. He's been practicing. Slade picks up the polo shirt, takes the scent and then turns heel, heads back to the doorway where his bags wait. 

He'd not even unpacked before Adeline had started throwing books at him, too distraught to even begin talking. Apparently, she'd been calling since yesterday morning. 

Slade had been busy.

He grabs what he's got, shoves Joey's shirt in too, and slams the door before he leaves. Even now, he can barely listen to Adeline as she thunders her words — they're all probably true, and he doesn't fucking care. 

Wherever Joey's gone off to, Slade will find. He's a _child_. He's not making the same mistake twice. 

* * *

Joey leaves behind a trail like a bulldozer, for such a small child. He's well known by the neighbors, and it doesn't take long for Slade to be pointed in the direction of the eastern river, split on both sides by woods. Since yesterday. 

_Yesterday._

Such a long time for Joey to be alone. Slade grits his teeth at the thought, nausea almost overwhelming. Grant was different.

Grant was headstrong, stupid to a monumental degree. Too focused on fucking Slade over than keeping himself alive. That should have been number one, not whatever Grant had tried to achieve. 

Joey was different now, too. Had to be. Slade had raised him better, after Grant. He'd seen the change himself. That steel in his eyes, replacing the softness of before. It would make a difference. 

And if not — well, Slade had a duffel full of weapons and a roaring sea of emotion to draw from. 

Rain the night before had washed away almost every clue, but Joey's a child. Clumsy. 

His shoes are too small to match most hikers, leaving little indents hardly bigger than Slade's hand. He picks his way through the trees carefully, half-worried he'll crush whatever evidence he has. The kid's had a head start of over twenty-four hours by the time Slade finds the little splatter of blood on trampled leaves. 

This far in, civilization feels worlds away. The reality in which his son is alive is distant, becoming more of a joke by the minute. Twenty-four hours. No water, no food. Rain. 

He hadn't even taken his jacket. 

Slade swallows down another wave of sick, staring at the little droplets of blood nearly washed away. Drags his fingers through the dirt, for lack of anything else to do, and tries not to shake himself to bits. 

He'll be dehydrated. Freezing cold. Probably hypothermic. And if Slade knows him at all, he'll be terrified, too. Under the steel, and the dullness. 

He carries on, and keeps an eye out for any more blood, not quite sure if he can handle it.

* * *

He checks his watch. Then the satellite cell in his bag. Looks up to the trees, and the sliver of darkening sky that peeks through between leaves. They rustle mockingly, deafeningly loud, filling the woods with their chattering. When he's done here, he might just set the whole place alight. 

It's been six hours. 

By his count, he should have caught up to the kid by now, and all the clues have dried up. Somewhere between the river and the small clearing of flowers, every hint of Joey had disappeared. No more blood. No more little footprints. No muddy hands on riverside rocks. Not even a broken twig. Slade curses, pivoting on the spot. Behind him, more woods. In front, a whole load of nothing. 

Adeline will kill him, if Slade doesn't do it first. 

He checks his watch again. 

Half four. Middle of spring. It shouldn't be getting dark. It's too fucking early to get dark, with clear skies forecast all fucking week, and Joey should be _here._ He wants to destroy everything in this damn forest until his son shakes free, and then he'll shake Joey too, because he _knows not to leave—_

He sets his jaw hard enough it aches and begins backtracking. 

Everything looks the same. Green. Darker green. Earthy mud. The bubbling of a nearby river. He considers dunking his head in the fucking river, just to clear his damn head when he's obviously not _thinking_ and it's just a _child._ Just Joey. He can't hide from Slade. Not ever. 

He growls curses as he takes a left, a useless direction when they're all the same, and finds nothing. Six hours, and it's getting darker by the moment, colder the longer he stomps around. 

He shouts Joey's name, hears it echo. Repeats, again, and again, and feels a little like he's going mad hearing his own voice like a distant, broken record.

No answer. Slade drops his bag abruptly, rooting through it. Under the little blue shirt, he digs out his flashlight, and gets to work again. 

The path he's on leads to nowhere, except more trees, more moss-covered rocks, more birds high above. How Joey thought this was a good idea, he has no fucking clue, increasingly pissed off by the minute as he stomps through damp ferns and climbs his way over a fallen tree. 

He's fucking _Deathstroke_ , master assassin, and doesn't expect to be bested by a fucking forest, entirely caught by surprise when his boot slips on the tree trunk and sends him down. 

Down, and down, and more fucking down. Holding onto anything is useless, just a wall of mud and rotten roots at his back, catching in his hair and scraping through his clothes. When he lands, it's to a large basin, multiple muddy paths splitting off from a single, large tree. 

Each branch is long and wide enough to blot out the dwindling light, leaves spread proudly to make sure Slade is blind here. His flashlight splutters out to nothing. His eyes should be working. He should be _seeing_ , and he can't. His enhancements should be compensating, but they're not. 

Slade leans into the wall behind him, the cold and wet seeping into his skin, both hands trembling. It should not scare him so much, that he's blind and alone, a few miles from his home. Joey is out here, and he may well have fallen too, broken bones or worse. 

He stares at the faintest outline he can make of the tree, strong and tall in the center of the opening he's found himself at. It looks familiar, though he's sure he's never seen it before. When Slade inhales, little shallow breaths, he tastes stainless steel and blood. 

Feels like being mocked. Like the whole damn forest is laughing at him, stumbling in the dark. He grits his teeth and makes to stand, tired of being useless in a fucking forest. He can hunt and kill any target, he can find his son. 

* * *

He takes the first path, a winding thing that only brings him back to the tree. Leaves rustle loudly on his return, and the cold seeps in further. The third path takes him to the fifth route in the circle, the fourth brings him, somehow, back to the first. It doesn't make sense. 

He gives up on trying the sixth and final path, absolutely sure it will bring him back to the damned tree, and tries to scale the wall instead. Twice his height and made of nothing but mud and entwined roots that snap under his weight, it proves useless too. 

It's getting darker by the minute, everything a blur of blue-and-black. Slade curses, and stomps around, and curses some more. Kicks the tree for good measure. 

His satellite phone flickers and fizzles out the second he pulls it from the bag. Dead. Which, in his professional opinion, _doesn't_ happen. There's nothing to shoot, and it's barely light enough to watch his own steps anymore. He feels a little like giving up. 

* * *

It's darker than ever. 

Dark in a way Slade's eyes can't adjust to. The wind's picked up, too, howling just to drown out Slade's voice as it turns hoarse and furious, shouting for Joey.

He's lost count of the hours. Lost count of how long it's been, and Joey is surely dead, some cold corpse huddling in the empty husk of an oak tree, drowned in the river after one wrong miss-step on those little feet. It's been too long. He should have found him by now. Joey fills every thought, a broken record of _dead, dead, dead._

Joey is dead, and Slade feels it like a wound, layered and deep. What began as a calm, if quiet forest, has become a confusing maze of tightly-packed trees, turning him in circles, pressing in close on every breath of Slade's.

He squeezes through two trees, both as broad as his shoulders, and knows something is wrong. Tastes it on his teeth, like an electric current. Things have changed, since he first set into the woods. 

That thought, crystalline in his mind, clears the haze of before. The panic. The nausea. Slade knows it before he's even seen it — magic. He's being fucked with. And, apparently, so is Joey. 

He continues on, keeps that thought with him like a weapon against the encroaching confusion, and finds himself back there again — the tree, the wall, the _path._

Where there was once six, there's only one. He stares at it for long, blank moments, nauseated the longer he peers into the darkness. Every path had been winding, twisting, but this one is a straight shot. Every last shred of common sense says to stay away. 

He shouldn't go in. He knows. Can _feel_ it like a warning bell, and that only pushes him on. Joey's down there, and he knows it. The wind picks up, entirely against him, howling. Pushing him back. 

"Fuck off." Slade snarls, and keeps going. It's too dark to see, every last inch of light swallowed by the branches above. Roots trip him up, and Slade uses an outstretched arm to keep himself on the right path. 

If he can't see, and he can't trust his head, and he can't find Joey — going forward is the only option. Even if it takes him back to that tree. Even if Adeline will kill him, even if Slade will do it himself— 

Something soft brushes against his knees, tickling his ankles where his pants have been ripped. He stops short. Stares as his fingers brush soft petals.

Flowers. 

He doesn't know the names. Blues and reds and pinks, little yellow things peeking out between, and he's too busy studying them like an idiot to realise the wind has died. The light is faint, peeking through thinner groups of leaves, allowing him to pick out what he's seeing. Everything, in fact, has died down. Not even the thinnest blade of grass moves. Silence reigns much as it had at home, in those sickening moments without Joey. He lingers at the mouth of the clearing, gripping the strap of his bag tight. Whatever is going on here, he'll find Joey, and that is perhaps all that matters. 

Despite not hearing the river anymore, he recognizes the clearing. The same one he'd passed through before, realising dimly that he's circled back entirely. Somehow. The path had been a straight, rigid route, and here he was again. Back where he first lost sight of Joey's little footprints. 

He takes another step into the circle, and another, and another. Even the flowers hold still with Slade's bated breath, tension in his gut as he powers ahead. 

Nothing happens, not even when he reaches the middle. Dead center, and there is a dissatisfying lack of motion. No voice from the darkness. No far-off scream, Joey's high lilt, still so young. His phone doesn't ring, Adeline to tell him Joey's safe, Joey's home. 

"Well?" He shouts. "Whatever this is, it can stop now." Throws his head back and snarls. "I'll fucking find you and rip your guts out, _you_ —" Whatever he was going to spew next is drowned out by the crumble of dirt beneath his feet, a fucking _sinkhole_ , Slade scrambling to dig his fingers into dissolving walls of mud and flower stems. 

For his troubles, he gets a fistful of little blue bell-shaped flowers, and dirt in his eyes, dirt in his hair, mud in his lungs when he shouts, some cut-off noise that nobody's going to hear. It cloys in his throat, clogs his airways until he can't stand it, presses in close like he's been buried. 

He wonders, with the calm of a man with nothing left to lose, if this is what Joey felt. If he choked on dirt and thought about home. 

Unceremoniously, he lands on his ass. Directly in a wet puddle. There's the faint sound of musical laughter, and the rustle of leaves. 

_Joey._

Slade scrambles to his feet, unsteady and still fighting the fog of before— fucking _magic._ He hates it. He reaches for a sword that isn't there, the bag gone. Looks up and finds there is no dirt, just open sky, trees a comfortable distance apart, allowing him to see blue skies in full swing. Little string lights hang from branches, a few birds watching from above silently.

"You're a very determined human." 

Slade whips around, ignoring the fact that he's most definitely not where he should be. Because his son is right there. 

"Joey." He says, voice turned rough. "Come here." Can't focus on anything besides his face, the familiar curve of soft cheeks, the ruffled edges of his hair. 

Relief and fury bubble inside of him with equal measure. He's alive, nothing but a few scratches to his soft, round cheeks and dirt in his blond hair. Slade's never been so happy to see him, never felt quite like this — the whiplash is dizzying. 

He could look, and look, and never get tired of it. 

"I don't think he's going anywhere." The words draw Slade's gaze to the man, the same one that had spoken before. 

He's tall, cloaked in something dark and shimmering, shoulders broad and relaxed. His smile sharpens the whole fucking world, turning the air crisp and the leaves above serrated. It sets the nerves of Slade's teeth off like warning klaxons, stinging in his jaw. 

"You." He snarls. "You're dead." 

Doesn't matter that he doesn't have a sword. Doesn't matter his bag is gone, or that he has no way to leave here, doesn't matter — the man's hand rests on Joey's delicate shoulder and Slade will find a way to rip that hand from his arm and shove it down his throat. 

He's moved before he thinks about it, no particular plan in his mind, just single-minded certainty. Joey stays quiet, but his eyes are locked to Slade like he can't look away, nothing but dullness there. 

"I think that's enough." The man says, and then waves a hand through the opening of his cloak. Slade's body stops listening to him immediately. 

It's a day for feeling out of his depth, apparently. He sits, a chair appearing beneath him, curved around his body comfortably despite his lack of choice. "Joey." He growls. Ignores the fact that he's being pushed toward them both, a large dining table between them. 

It's piled high with food. Sweet cakes and little glasses of dark liquid, meat and fresh apples, a bowl of forest fruits. Too focused on Joey to even notice it, really, but once he does he can't stop. It looks an awful lot like a banquet, rustic little candles and flowers adorning every corner. 

The urge to eat is paramount. It's been long, long hours since he last ate, and traversing the woods had been difficult, even with his enhancements. 

"Do you know who I am?" The man asks, and slouches into his own chair. It's far larger than Slade's, curved roots weaving themselves into intricate patterns. A throne. 

"The asshole who stole my kid." He snaps. Tears his eyes from the food to Joey's quick little hands, taking a selection of berries. They stain his mouth a vibrant red. "Don't eat that." 

Joey freezes. Looks to the man. He receives a nod and then continues splitting berries between his teeth, sucking the juice from his hands. 

"I didn't steal him." The man says lightly. Leans forward to pick up an apple and take a healthy bite. "All my children find me, for one reason or another." 

_My children._ Slade spits. Catches the flash of annoyance in the other man's eyes, chewing on his fucking apple like he won't be dead soon. "Joey has a father." 

"Does he?" He tilts his head. "He was lost, alone. Cold and afraid. Hungry. And where was his father?" He regards his apple with narrowed eyes. "You only care when it suits you. Joey is mine now. You're free to leave, he's safer here." 

"You can't _have him."_ He snaps. Despite the man's words, the bindings don't ease, and Slade struggles against his seat. "Joey. Son. Come here. _Now."_

Again, Joey freezes, looks to him with blank eyes, half a blueberry to his lips. He considers Slade for a long minute, and then continues eating. 

"I think he'd like to stay." The man comments. Squeezes Joey's shoulder. Fucking _bastard._ "Do you know where you are?" 

"No, and I don't give a shit, actually—" 

"You're in my Kingdom." He states plainly. "You have no power here, and never will, Slade Wilson." Looks at him with such withering that even the trees shy away, bending in the still air. "Have you heard of fae?" 

"You're a fucking _fairy?"_ He splutters. Nearly laughs. Would laugh, if he couldn't feel Joey slipping through his fingers like sand. No. _No._ "And what, you take in poor, unloved little kids? My kid isn't that. Joey, your mom's worried. You need to come home." 

"He can't." The fucking _fairy_ says, blue eyes fixed on Slade with certainty. "He has eaten the food, and he will remain here." 

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" He asks, straining forward. 

"You will watch your language in front of the King, and the child." The man says, and chews another mouthful of apple. "If you eat the food of fae, you are bound here. He cannot leave. He does not want to leave." 

For a second all Slade sees is red, nothing but blood and violence. "You put a spell on him?" From the corner of his eye, he watches Joey's mouth twitch, a little frown forming.

"He had a choice." The King says. "He made it." When he shifts in his chair, the cloak around his shoulders shimmers, catching the spring light, every color under the sun in the fibers. "You will leave, knowing that your child is safe. No harm will come to him." 

"Like hell I will." Slade throws back, and finds himself suddenly toppled forwards. He digs shaking fingers into the ground, breath coming hard. 

_No._

He thinks of Grant. Thinks of Adeline. Thinks of Joey, sitting at this table, looking at Slade like he barely knows him. 

When he meets the King's eyes, he finds nothing but amusement, a cruel edge. He pats Joey's shoulder again, and then rises to his full height, an imposing figure with Slade on his knees. 

"You will go." He says, his voice turned soft and melodic. Magic. "Joey is safer here."

"Fuck you." Slade snarls, and reaches out, shoves whatever he's grabbed into his mouth. Sweet cream and the buttery texture of cake coats his mouth, barely chewed before Slade swallows it. It doesn't take deliberating, or thinking, to know he's not losing another son.

He holds the King's gaze, steady and sure. 

"Remarkable." The King murmurs. Joey's eyebrows knit together, and Slade can taste sugar melting on his tongue, the tartness of strawberries. 

"I'm not leaving, if he's not leaving." Slade spits. He doesn't feel different, nothing has changed. He's not even sure if it worked. He hopes, with every last shred he has, that it worked. 

From the other side of the table, the man regards him quietly, blue eyes piercing and cold. "Very well. I suppose you are a lost child, too." 

Slade arches an eyebrow. "Excuse me?" 

"As part of my Kingdom, you will respect your King." Is all he says, and then looks to Joey. "Are you ready to return?" When he speaks to Joey, he's far warmer, the edges of his face relaxed, the smile on his mouth no longer threatening and sharp. 

He looks trustworthy. Slade doesn't like it one bit. 

He drags himself to his feet, not quite sure what to do. What the fuck he's gotten himself into. Some far-away hysterical part of his mind notes that he's taller than the King, and that somehow feels like a pathetic victory. 

Adeline will definitely kill him, if he ever sees her again. 

Joey doesn't so much as look at him when he's nudged forward by the King, nearly hidden entirely by his cloak. Out of everything, that hurts the most. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are nice. Expect uh, erratic updates. Just keeping myself busy while writing Drive Slow.


End file.
